Missouri Harvest: Pleasant Surprise, But No Bin-Buster

Crops are turning a golden brown and combines are finally starting to roll in Missouri. While some farmers are saying yields are beating their expectations, the yield monitor isn’t showing the bin-buster numbers like these farmers had originally hoped.

"Really the corn is better than anticipated so far, but it really varies depending on the farm," says Lance Dobson who farms outside of Lexington, Mo.

Harvest is a month later than last year. And he’s only a few days in, so corn is just starting to hit the semis.

"I think we're going to be around average some are going to be a little above, some a little less," says Dobson.

Average corn yields for the area are 180 to 185 bushels per acre. Dobson says variability is huge, and that’s making it hard to peg overall yields this year. He says moisture is sitting right around 21 percent and doesn’t seem to be moving very fast

"Like this farm here, we still have to pick around some of the lower lying areas where the moisture is higher," says Dobson.

He says corn yields are better than anticipated considering the weather extremes. In May, they had six inches of snow, and it stayed cool and wet until July

"The corn hung in there really well," says Dobson. "The biggest thing was we had a cool summer. We may have been lacking in moisture, but it made up for it with the cooler summer,"

Soybeans, he says, aren’t looking as good.

"45 (bushels per acre) would be nice," he says.

Yields are looking to be below average.

"When they were full flowering and we went ahead and put foliar feed and fungicide and the whole works on them," he says. "And about that time the rains shut off. We never did receive a substantial amount of rain while they were setting pods and filling pods."

Dobson says they received four inches of rain mid-September, but by that time, it was too late

"These beans missed that last rain we had," he says. You can see the pretty poor bean size that we have here."

And just like with the corn, late planting, combined with a cool start to the summer, means harvest is behind.

"We try to plant around May 10th, and this year, we didn't start planting beans until June 18th or so," says Dobson.

While he’s just getting started, Dobson knows when moisture shut off, it hurt yields. So, he’s not sure if yields will get any better from here on out.